Uneasy Alliances Part 15

Kadakithis came toward her, his arms outstretched. "Daphne, I'm sorry. I never expected-"

She waved him off, and again crossed to the farthest side of the room away from him. "Spare me any more of your winnings, Kitty-Kat." She knew how he hated that name. "You never expected me to be so reasonable? So generous as to give you the divorce? Or such a b.i.t.c.h?" She threw back her head and laughed, pleased by the effect it had on her weakling mate. "Well, I don't intend to disappoint you, darling." She felt the heat rise in her cheeks, though she tried to smother her anger. "I'm not going to be reasonable or generous. I am going to show you what a b.i.t.c.h I really can be."

He stared, apparently at a loss for words. She found him funny as he stood there, mouth agape. He persisted in thinking of her as the sweet, demure child he had taken for his bride, the child who'd loved and obeyed him and had never said a word about his philandering or his spineless sc.r.a.ping before his brother, Abakithis.

That Daphne was dead. The Raggah and the filth who lived on Scavengers* Isle had killed her.

"You want your divorce? You want to marry your fish-faced lover?" She laughed again. "You can, my Kitty-Kat." She pointed a trembling finger and released emotions too long held inside her. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d! He hadn't even tried to find her! "But there's a price to pay, first." Her lips curled ferally. "There's always a price."

"Anything!" Kadakithis stuttered. "Just tell me-"

She interrupted him. "Oh, you'll regret that word. But not so fast, former love of my life. This is my last grandstand as your wife, and I want a handpicked audience. Only then will you leam the terms of our divorce."

Kadakithis's face turned stony. He glared at her. "Is this another game you're playing?"

If she'd had something close at hand she'd have thrown it at him. In fact, she wondered now if he'd had the room cleared just to avoid such an incident. It was remarkably bare of small objects. "Of course, it's a game," she answered, recovering a measure of calm. "You poor boy. Will you ever grow up and open your eyes? It's all a G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned game. You'd better learn to play, instead of hiding here behind your nice safe walls. As it is, you're nothing but a p.a.w.n for Shupansea and Molin. Be a player, d.a.m.n you! For once in your innocent, naive life open your eyes and be a man! Until you manage that nothing here will ever truly be yours. Not this city, not Shu-sea, nothing."

He trembled visibly. She saw that from across the room, but strangely she found little joy in her triumph. She knew few people had ever dared to talk to him that way, or dared to tell him such a truth.

"Your audience," he reminded her. He could barely get out the words; his lips made a thin, taut line, and his eyes were narrowed slits.

Daphne drew a slow breath, her anger finally spent. She had not realized the depth of the bitterness she'd harbored against her husband. But that was suddenly gone, at least for the moment. There was still the purpose though-the reason she'd decided to grant the divorce.

"You," she said softly, "and Shupansea, and Molin." She raised a finger for each name. Lastly she lifted the little finger of her right hand. "But most importantly, our dear garrison commander."

The Prince raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Walegrin?"

She allowed a small, cruel smile. "His fame precedes him, does it not? My terms will be of special interest to sweet Walegrin."

There was no love in the look he gave her, no regret. A shared past, shared dreams and ideals, they meant nothing to him anymore. He wanted only his divorce, and as quickly as possible, she saw that in his gaze. The chill in his voice made even Savankala turn his head away, and the room grew darker as, beyond the window, a cloud pa.s.sed over the sun. "When and where do we play your game?" he said.

There was only one place. "The Hall of Justice," she answered. "Tomorrow. You can sweat for a while wondering what I'm planning."

Kadakithis folded his arms over his chest. "Then the G.o.ds be with us all."

She spat on his lovely, marbled floor. "Don't blaspheme," she advised acidly. "The G.o.ds have nothing to do with this business."

She left him then, pa.s.sing within a hand's breadth of him on her way to the door. She smelled his essence and the clean crispness of his garments. She felt the warmth of him they pa.s.sed so closely. But she gave him not another glance. She was numb, she told herself, numb.

In a strange kind of serenity she walked through the palace, through the Hall of Justice, and across Vashanka's Square. Her palanquin and her friends waited at the Processional Gate. They hailed her as she joined them. Each man held a fine silver goblet.

"We sent the wine back," Leyn informed her, "and requested water, instead. There's still a day's training ahead of us when we get back to Land's End."

She didn't have it in her to smile. She parted the curtains of her transport and climbed inside. "Take me home, Leyn," she whispered. "Please take me home." She let the drape fall between her and the rest of the world and did her best to smother the sounds of her tears.

Dayrne fed sc.r.a.ps of freshly killed meat to Chenaya's falcon. Reyk was reluctant to feed, however. The bird took the bits, chewed them briefly, and dropped them to the bottom of his cage. He emitted a long, shrill call, spread his wings to their fullest, then folded them again. He crawled into one comer, finally, and turned away from his feeder.

Dayrne gave up. He set the bowl inside the cage where Reyk could reach it if he changed his mind.

"He misses Chenaya."

Dayrne looked around. He hadn't even heard Daphne approach. A frown creased his lips. Didn't she ever wear anything but her training garb anymore?

"You're armed," she noticed. "Going out?"

He glanced at the sky. Twilight crept slowly over the heavens. It would be dark soon. Asphodel would be in the Promise like a mother hen protecting her clutch. He remembered the small dagger she wore in her garter and smiled grimly. If the Raggah were involved, she'd need a h.e.l.l of a lot more than that.

"Personal business," he told Daphne. He turned and walked through the aviary, paying no attention to the other falcons in their cages. Birds were Lowan's hobby, not his.

Daphne kept pace beside him as he headed for the estate. "Let me help," she offered.

Dayme paused. If there were Raggah to hunt, didn't Daphne have the right to join him? He shook his head. Despite all her training and skill, she was a princess of Ranke. He had no right to risk her safety. Besides, he had no proof that the Raggah were his prey. Only a suspicion.

"Personal," he repeated. He increased the length of his stride, leaving her behind. She didn't try to keep up, but stopped instead and glared. He could feel the power of her anger at his back.

The twelve original gladiators who had accompanied Lowan Vigeles to Sanctuary had all been quartered within the estate. Two were dead; they were only ten now, but his grief was eased by the knowledge that his brothers had died bringing an end to Zip's tyranny. There was honor in that, so their deaths were goodHe sought Dismas and Gestus in the rooms they shared. Dismas was curled on the edge of the bed with a book of poems. His lover, Gestus, busied himself with a whetstone and a favored dagger. They looked up when Dayme entered.

"I'll be gone most of the night," he said softly. "Perhaps for the next few nights as well. I'd like it if the two of you took charge of the watch tonight. Double the guards on all the other gates, too."

Dismas closed his book. "Expecting trouble?"

"In this town?" He didn't need to say more. His comrades set aside their diversions and rose to follow him out.

"I won't ask your business," Dismas said as they closed the door behind them. "But do you need any help?"

"Personal," Dayme answered as he had to Daphne. Among the ten no other explanation was ever necessary. They were all auctorati, free fighters, at liberty to come and go as they pleased.

He left them, strode through the estate and out to the main gates. Leyn and a dark-haired giant named Dendur, one of the new recruits, stood duty. He exchanged a few words, then pa.s.sed into the street.

The entrance to the Promise was as dark as ever. There was no stone waiting on the pillar for him, though. It didn't matter; he didn't plan to let Asphodel know he was here. He stole into the bushes and glanced at the sky again. One night past full moon, Sabellia still filled the world with her pleasure.

Light enough to see by-enough light to be seen.

He crouched lower and began to move.

The Promise of Heaven was a large park, triangular in shape. Three entrances and three main walkways welcomed visitors, but dozens of smaller trails snaked among the trees and foliage. All along these trails in small, secluded niches stood pillared busts and statues, little shrines to all the various G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that had ever been worshipped in Sanctuary, each cared for by their various priests.

By daytime, the park was the shaded haunt of those priests and their acolytes, of philosophers and their students. It was a school where learned men met to share discourse, where supplicants sometimes came to pray.

By night, however, the niches belonged to the prost.i.tutes-and to their supplicants who came to play.

Or prey, Dayme reminded himself as he crept from place to place. Here and there, a giggle rose on the breeze. Here and there, the sounds of quick and furtive lovemaking. Dayrne was above embarra.s.sment. He went about his search with a singleness of mind. Sabellia sailed serenely through the night, marking the time. He wasn't sure when he first felt eyes upon his back. He realized only that someone watched him, someone as quiet and subtle as he. He moved to his right, and they moved with him. He circled left, and they followed. Oh, they were good, indeed! Whoever his companion was, he couldn't spot him. But he knew someone was there.

He headed for the idol of the Ilsigi G.o.ddess, Shipri. A large niche, he remembered. There would be plenty of moonlight. If he was clever, he might lure his tag-a-long into that brightness. He fingered the pommel of his sword and pressed on.

Then, he cursed. There were voices in the niche. Of course, there would be! Shipri was a G.o.ddess of love and motherhood. What better place for a prost.i.tute to set up shop? He parted the bushes for a look.

The voices stopped suddenly. At first, he feared he had been seen. But neither the man nor the woman there turned his way. Indeed, their eyes never seemed to move at all. After a moment, the man resumed the conversation, but the woman gave no answer. She didn't speak a word. Neither did her gaze leave her partner's face.

An alarm jangled in Dayrne's head. He peered closer at the blackcloaked man, unable to tell much about him save his height. A hood concealed his features, also any weapons he bore. But he was tall, much too tall for a Raggah. And he spoke Rankene.

"Come with me," the man said, crooking his finger. The prost.i.tute smiled and fell into step beside her suitor. They left the niche and walked down the pebbled path.

Their tread made no sound!

Almost, Dayrne leaped from his hiding place, drawing his sword. Sorcery! If he struck swiftly, the fiend might not have time to react. A clean stroke through the neck-separate the head from the body-that was the best way to kill a wizard.

But he stopped himself. That might save this lady, but what of the other missing wh.o.r.es? He owed it to Asphodel to try and find them. He didn't relish the task, and he cursed his own sense of loyalty. Still, he owed. There was no more to be said about it. Of one thing he was sure, though. This villain was no Raggah.

Dayrne followed the pair. Apparently, the wizard knew the park well. Shipri's grove was isolated in a little-traveled area of the Promise. The walkways were empty. They wove a careful course toward the high wall at the southeast corner. Dayrne rubbed his chin. He'd expected them to make for one of the entrances. Where could they be going?

In the very corner where the two walls joined stood one of the tallest of the park's G.o.d-sculptures. Dayrne ducked behind a shrub while the wizard and his catch approached the Father of the Ilsigi pantheon, mighty Us.

The wizard left the prost.i.tute in the G.o.d's shadow while he went to the jointure of the walls. He put his left hand on a certain brick about shoulder high in the east face. His right found another brick in the south face at belly level. The two bricks were barely within his reach, and he strained to press them inward.

Dayme heard a grinding of stone against stone as the statue of Us moved on its base.

The wizard crooked a finger, and the prost.i.tute went to his side. He led her down into a black crack at the idol's feet and the darkness swallowed them. Dayrne bit his lip. She'd gone like a sheep to slaughter, without protest, smiling as if she'd smoked a whole bag of krrff.

Again came that grating sound, and the pit suddenly sealed. Dayrne leaped out of his concealment and raced to the wall. Which were the right stones? He strove to remember. He was taller than the wizard, and his arms were longer. He chose a pair and pressed. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. He was sure he had the correct left-hand brick. But which was the right?

Suddenly, Us moved. Dayme thanked his own G.o.ds, stepped to the edge of the opening and looked down. A set of stone steps descended into utter blackness. He spent only an instant wishing for a lamp or a torch, then took the first step.

The air was oppressive and stale. He glanced back upward at the square of moonlight and drew a final fresh breath. He didn't take time to search for the closing mechanism, but drew his sword and began to feel his way forward, brushing one hand along the slime-slicked wall.

The tunnel led in only one direction. He'd heard rumors of such tunnels, but all reports had confined them to the Maze. Apparently the reports were wrong.

The darkness made him pause. It was worse than being blind because he knew that he could see. His eyes were wide open, shifting from side to side, straining for some object or bit of light to fasten onto. His heart thundered in his ribs. Still, he pushed on, mindful of the promise he'd made to Asphodel.

A web draped over his head. He opened his mouth, a shout rising in his throat. Barely, he choked it back, and he rubbed his sleeve over his face in a frantic haste to free himself from the sticky strands.

Now, how in h.e.l.l had that d.a.m.n wizard dodged that?

He crept on, all too aware of the closeness of the walls, of the weight of the earth over his head.

Then-was that a light?

He moved a little faster, careful still to make no sound. The tiny spot of light became a flame in the distance, then a sconced lamp with another just beyond it. Dayme hovered at the edge of the darkness and listened.

A low voice rode on the stagnant air. Impossible to distirguish the words, but by the rhythms and stresses, Dayme thought it some kind of chant. He saw nothing ahead, though, so pressing against the wall, he ventured on into the light.

He stopped again. A too-familiar scent wafted through the tunnel. Dayme sniffed. His brows knitted together for an instant, and he clenched the hilt of his sword.

A death smell hung in the air, the unmistakable odor of rotting flesh. Too many years in the Rankan arenas as a slave and as an auctoratus had made him familiar with that stench. Gritting his teeth, trying not to breathe too often or too deeply, he followed the scent and the voice.

A shriek ripped through the tunnel. The fine hairs on Dayme's neck rose straight up. A woman's voice! Another cry echoed after the first, then a pause, and a long series of screams and broken sobbings.

Dayme abandoned stealth and ran forward. The chant had risen to match the intensity of the screams. A mad cacophony of sound swirled around him. He ran wide-eyed and fearful, yet the fear did not stop him. It drew him, instead, until he found the entrance to a side room off the tunnel.

He realized at once the tunnel's original purpose. He was surely close to the palace by now, and this was an old escape route used in times of emergency, built by the Ilsigs, perhaps still unknown to the current Rankan occupants. The side room was full of empty weapon racks where fleeing men might once had grabbed swords before emerging aboveground in the Promise.

But not all his arena experience had prepared him for the rest of the sight.

In the light of a dozen oil lamps Dayme saw the bodies of Asphodel's missing prost.i.tutes. They hung by their necks from metal spikes driven deep into the walls, twisted ropes biting through the bloated flesh of their throats. Plainly, though, they had been killed before they were hanged.

The first few women had merely been stabbed through the hearts. The purpled, crusted wounds showed visibly on their bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The next one had been disemboweled; the flesh of her belly had been peeled back to reveal emptiness; she looked like nothing more than a gutted fish. The mutilations grew progressively more cruel. The skin and muscle had been sliced from one, leaving the organs in full view. Another had been left relatively intact with only dark holes showing where the organs had been removed. On yet another body the visible veins and arteries had been precisely, surgically opened, making a strange and gruesome mapwork.

Blood had stained the wall a nauseating color where the corpses hung. Old puddles and rivulets of blood had dried and crusted on the floor beneath them.

Dayme reeled at the insanity of it.

He fixed his eyes on the center of the room. Bound upon a crossshaped altar a woman screamed again, her terror filling the chamber and the tunnel beyond. It was the wh.o.r.e he'd followed from Shipri's niche. Whatever entrancement her captor had placed upon her had faded. Her feet and wrists bled as she struggled in her ropes.

At her head stood her captor. The wizard's eyes snapped open and fixed suddenly on Dayrne. The chant died in his throat. The gleaming knife he'd brandished over the prost.i.tute turned point first toward the gladiator, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed a second dagger from a table of instruments close at hand.

Outrage smothered any thought of fear. Dayrne started across the room, raising his sword. The wizard stepped swiftly to the altar's far side, putting his victim between himself and his unexpected attacker. As he moved he brought the points of his two blades together and barked a short command in a language Dayrne didn't know.

A pain stabbed the gladiator's heart. The breath rushed from him, and he clenched his teeth. Still he forced another step forward, fighting the sudden agony. The pain struck him again, and as he took another step, yet again stronger than ever. His knees buckled; the arcane fire in his chest consumed his strength. A red tide flooded his vision. His fingers trembled with seizure on the hilt of his sword.

He forced his head up, expecting a death stroke from one of the daggers. The wizard had felled him easily; Dayrne was helpless at that moment. Yet, his foe kept his place behind the altar and his victim.

Then, Dayrne saw fear, not triumph, on his foe's face.

Fighting the pain, he crawled back toward the entrance. With each retreating step the pressure on his heart lessened. He leaned on the jamb and slowly pulled himself to his feet, gasping for one good breath.

The wizard lowered his blades. A fine sweat sheened on his brow, and the glow of the oil lamps lent him a strange countenance.

Still, the fear was unmistakable; Dayrne saw it in those dark. deep-set eyes.

The prost.i.tute cried piteously. "Help me'" she begged Dayrne. "Don't let him kill me, I'm with child!"

Dayrne stayed by the door. He needed a moment to recover his strength and to think. For all the wizard's apparent power, he feared Dayrne. Why?

"Don't just stand there like a worthless eunuch!" the wh.o.r.e shouted when her rescuer didn't move. "He's going to-"

The wizard frowned and touched her temple with one finger. Her head sagged back before she could say another word. Her eyes fluttered shut. She sighed, then went limp.

But almost instantly, her lids snapped open again. She screamed and cowered away from the wizard's hand as far as her bonds allowed.

The wizard roared in frustration, grasped both his blades in his right hand, and seized the woman's hair in his left- He jerked her head up then sharply down on the altar. She let go a short gasp as her eyes rolled and closed. A fine trickle of blood oozed down the cross under her head and dripped to the floor.

"I get so tired of the noise," the wizard said in exasperation.

Dayrne leaped across the threshold, but his foe was just as fast. Again the points of the blades touched, and again he shouted in that strange tongue.

Dayrne screamed as fire exploded in his chest and a rush of tears halfblinded him. But he kept his feet and flung himself at the altar. Wideeyed, the wizard sprang back against the wall, clutching the daggers in shivering hands.

"Whatever G.o.d has siphoned my power, I've still more than enough for you," the wizard hissed. But his voice quavered.